The Book of the Church, 1; In Two Volumes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1824 edition. Excerpt: ... which they had just heard pronounced, should fall upon his head. Holv St. Drauscio, an inoffensive man, whose life is one of the most uneventful in hagiology, should have become the Patron Saint in such cases, does not appear. The most notable thing recorded of him is, that after he had been dead and bu VOL. I. O ried three years, he not only permitted his devotees to cut his hair and his nails for relics, but even allowed them to draw one of his teeth, though the operation produced an effusion of blood, as if it had been performed upon a living subject Excommunication had been one means whereby the Druids maintained their hierocracy; and it has been thought, that among nations of Keltic origin, the clergy, as succeeding to their influence, established more easily the portentous tyranny which they exercised, not over the minds of men alone, but in all temporal concerns. Every community must possess the right of expelling those members who will not conform to its regulations: the Church, therefore, must have power to excommunicate a refractory member, as the State has to outlaw a bad subject, who will not answer to the laws. But there is reason to believe that no heathen priests ever abused this power so prodigiously as the Roman clergy; nor, even if the ceremonies were borrowed, as is not improbable, from heathen superstition, could they originally have been so revolting, so horrible, as when a Christian minister called upon the Redeemer of mankind, to fulfil execrations which the Devil himself might seem to have inspired. In the forms of malediction appointed for this blasphemous service, a curse was pronounced against the obnoxious persons in soul and body, and in all their limbs and joints and members, every part being specified with...